Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds by Eleanor Lerman (Sarabande Books) has
won the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Academy of
American Poets and the Nation, which awards $25,000 to "the most
outstanding book of poetry published the previous year." The judges
were poets Carl Dennis, Tony Hoagland, and Carol Muske-Dukes. Hoagland
praised the winner this way: "Eleanor Lerman's poems have sociological
savvy, philosophical rue, historical recognition, and vernacular
resilience. They sing a song that is bravely gloomy, but they sing it
with a fierce and earned dignity."
The finalists for the award were:
The finalists for the award were:
- Christian Barter for The Singers I Prefer (CavanKerry Press)
- Jack Gilbert for Refusing Heaven (Knopf)
- Dorianne Laux for Facts About the Moon (Norton)
- Ron Slate for The Incentive of the Maggot (Mariner Books)
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Duende by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press) has won the 2006 James Laughlin Award, a $5,000 prize that recognizes and supports a poet's second book--in this case the book will be published next year. The finalist for the prize is Frannie Lindsay's Lamb (Perugia Press, 2006). The Academy of American Poets wrote: "Smith's work is known for its lyrical beauty and its look outside the self. The voices in her poems inhabit a larger world beyond the confines of the present moment, but without ignoring immediate political and social concerns."